Re: [9fans] questions about 9atom and 9legacy; and their updates

[David du Colombier <0intro@gmail.com>]

> 1) How often does Bell Lab's version change? How often/well
> do patches from 9legacy enter BL's version? Some numbers?

There used to be changes on sources almost every day,
up to March 2014. Now the latest change is from September 17.

Most of the 9legacy changes where included into Plan 9.
Unfortunately, Plan 9 is now in a pretty frozen state.

> 2) How do 9atom and 9legacy notice that there has been
> a change in BL? (I'd guess that 9legacy could notice
> immediately, but ...) How is it with 9atom?

I'll speak for 9legacy. Most of the patches are automatically
applied on the latest Plan 9 CD image on a regular basis.

When a patch doesn't apply anymore, I fix it.
When a patch has already been applied, I remove it.

> 3) How is updating supposed to work in case of 9atom
> and 9legacy (as compared to BL's replica) I.e., when
> I decide to use either 9atom or 9legacy and at some
> point there is some change in them, will I / can I
> easily notice and follow?

9legacy is really just a set of patches available on
top on Plan 9. It's not a full distribution like 9atom
or 9front.

I didn't want to run my own replica server, having
to keep the whole repository synchronized with Plan 9.

Instead, I chose to simply provide a list of patches
that any Plan 9 user might find useful and install
on its machine.

If you choose to install from a 9legacy CD image, you
will get updates from the /n/sources replica server.

That said, now that Plan 9 is not as actively maintained
as it used to be, 9legacy might move to his own
full distribution.

> 5) I am puzzled about licences. At one point I almost
> thought that the software is actually BSD-like
> (i.e. you can do almost whatever, no copyleft,
> Lucent Public License Version 1.02). Now I read:
>
>     In February 2014 the University of California, Berkeley, has been
>     authorised by the current Plan 9 copyright holder – Alcatel-Lucent
>     – to release all Plan 9 software previously governed by the Lucent
>     Public License, Version 1.02 under the GNU General Public License,
>     Version 2
>
> so the mentioned univesity will offer it under GPL, which is viral
> (is copyleft). That surprises me...

Plan 9 is currently available under LPL 1.02 (/n/sources)
or GPLv2 (https://github.com/brho/plan9).

Unfortunately, this is a complicated story. Ron could tell you
more about this. Alcatel-Lucent refused to distribute Plan 9
under a more liberal licence than GPLv2.

-- 
David du Colombier